I thought EC believed that, with the exception that I thought most believe God can intervene (a miracle) but doesn’t on a regular basis…but that kind of sounds like ID. Unless ID was more intervening on the regular?
But now it sounds like EC and ID are the same again…after homo sapiens, but differ before between creation of earth to homo sapiens.
Since EC follows the Bible though, we have a guide after homo sapiens. What does ID believe happen once homo sapiens are here? Do they go to the agnostic/atheist view that our purpose is subjective to all men?
ID is not a person. People within the ID movement have a range of religious beliefs and a range of degree of acceptance of scientific consensus on the age of the earth and evolutionary model of biodiversity. What unifies them is their attempts to detect design using scientific investigation.
Alternatively, “At some unspecified time, at some unspecified place, some person or persons or beings or whatever designed one or more living systems or whatever. Questions about the designer(s) are not allowed, especially if the designer is you-know-who.”
It is the genetic fallacy, but then so too is the topic of the thread. The question is why people suspect ID researchers of being influenced by Christian apologetics, and the answer is the history of the ID movement itself. Of course, each ID claim needs to be addressed fairly and independently of this history, but there is often a political and sociological side to these discussions as well.
To use an analogy, it is a bit like a climate researcher who says that man is not causing climate change, but then you find out that his salary and all of his research was directly funded by Exxon. In fact, you find that nearly all of the scientists who deny man-caused climate change are funded by fossil fuel companies. Yes, you should look at their work based on just the science, but it is hard to ignore the connection.
The struggle between intuition and evidence is what defined the emergence of modern science. The two main camps were the Rationalists and the Empiricists. The Rationalists argued that they could divine the workings of the universe through intuition and rationalization. The Empiricists argued that you needed independent sensory evidence to test your ideas. The Empiricists won out, and what we got was the Baconian method followed by the modern scientific method. If you watched the Cosmos series then you may be familiar with the motto of the oldest scientific organization, the Royal Society, which reads “Nullius in verba”, or “Take nobody’s word for it”.
Of course, the Rationalist v. Empiricist debate spilled outside of science, and I probably did a poor job of describing the subtle nuances of each side of the debate. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy appears to have a decent web page on the debate if you are interested in any further reading.
Right, it comes from a religious commitment. But there are YEC Catholics, LDS, Muslims, and Jews, not just Protestants.
How so? I think many are genuinely moved by the awe-inspiring intricacies of creation and think that it would be a win for God and faith if something could be nailed down in the scientific realm that pointed undeniably to God’s involvement.
This is a simplification of both human reason and science. Intuition is relevant to scientists who have spent a lifetime of research in a highly specialised area, and is probably the source of most (if not all) new ideas. We do not operate on either intuition and ignore experimental results, or only rely on sensory data and avoid ideas/intuitive notions. Science needs ideas to advance, but because we humans often make mistakes, we test every idea and scrutinise every data - this is science. Beyond that we turn to schools of philosophy.
It is perhaps entertaining to realise the favourite story from atheists is usually the earth as the centre of the universe, and this was thought so by the Greeks based on intuition. My history books say that this was based on demonstration and sensory data - every object that was allowed to fall, fell to the earth, and they extrapolated this to show the objects would fall to the centre of the earth, thus (empirical) evidence prove to the Greeks the earth was the centre.
QM is considered counter intuitive by comparison with classical mechanics, which are based on observation and maths. QM theory however is a thing of beauty and hardly counters any scientific outlook.
When I see a atheist/evolutionism vs. Christian/ EC debate, and the argument an atheist makes is God/designer can’t be scientifically tested. And the Christian agrees, but says there is a spiritual realm that can’t be scientifically tested, this is real and undeniable.
Then the ID comes in and says they are both wrong. Which infuriates both, so they ask for evidence and the ID claims they have none, but it exists maybe?
I can respect the zeal of that. what is the intent though or the end state?
Are they searching for the truth? Or are they hoping to prove God to convert all when God is proven? I feel like AIG is attempting to save all through claiming science proves the Genesis account.
Which sounds not correct, as they are all different exclusive paths to God. So scientific proof in God, would not save all.
Actually, I’m pretty sure they would claim they have some.
Yes. Aren’t we all?
True. I think the point is more to show definitively and scientifically (not just philosophically) that naturalistic explanations fall short when it comes to describing reality.
No, that is a theological question that relates to Scripture. They are interested in proving that something in nature is so complex that the only explanation is information that came from outside intelligence.
It’s not actually the genetic fallacy unless you say that the argument is invalid simply due to the origin of the argument. Pointing out the background of ID and the movement’s formal supporters, is simply factual information which can inform conclusions about their claims, and does give reasonable grounds for additional caution and skepticism about those claims. But this background doesn’t mean they’re necessarily wrong.
I don’t think it is surprising that we have to simplify ideas in threads like these, but your criticisms are always welcomed and appreciated.
The context of the paragraph you quoted is found in a subsequent post where I discussed the debate between Rationalism and Empiricism. I will fully agree that hypotheses often start as an idea born of human intuition, but it doesn’t stop there in science. Previously, it did stop there. That was the big shift that happened during the birth of modern science. No longer did natural philosophers argue about how nature worked using the methods of Aristotle. Rather, they required empirical evidence to back their arguments, and they also required their ideas to be falsifiable. If I were to simplify again, the scientific method boils down to the ethos of trying to prove yourself wrong through experiments.[quote=“GJDS, post:52, topic:36855”]
It is perhaps entertaining to realise the favourite story from atheists is usually the earth as the centre of the universe, and this was thought so by the Greeks based on intuition. My history books say that this was based on demonstration and sensory data - every object that was allowed to fall, fell to the earth, and they extrapolated this to show the objects would fall to the centre of the earth, thus (empirical) evidence prove to the Greeks the earth was the centre.
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When atheists mention Geocentrism it is usually within the context of the Roman Catholic Church persecuting those who challenged it because it went against religious orthodoxy, and it is often used as analogy for Young Earth Creationism.
One example I personally enjoy is the lumeniferous aether, or the ether as it was later called. They discovered that light acted as a wave, so human intuition said that there had to be something that was waving, a medium through these waves interacted with. Michelson and Morley set up an experiment to measure the ether, and it just wasn’t there. Many people argued against their findings, but over time the evidence demonstrated that there was no ether. In the age of Rationalism, the ether might have stood.
The controversy has its roots in the enthusiastic acceptance of Aristotle by the Western Church and the logic therein. I am surprised at how little is known about this, as the Eastern Church adopted a dogma of the creative energies of God and opposed the wholesale acceptance of teachings such as the primal cause, and the many Greek ideas that accompanied pagan philosophy. Nowadays the Western and Eastern Christian traditions are mainly interested in reconciliation and Thomas is mainly accepted by the bulk of orthodoxy. Greek logic was used by Patristic writers so that area is now less controversial.
The modern version of the natural sciences has slowly grown from ideas within the framework of natural philosophy - I think theology of nature seems to be more of a Protestant movement, but again I am sure that too has a complicated history.
Whatever the source, the stance the Holy See (i.e. Inquisition) took was that the Bible described the Sun moving about the Earth.
“First, . . . to want to affirm that in reality the sun is at the center of the world and only turns on itself without moving from east to west, and the earth . . . revolves with great speed about the sun . . . is a very dangerous thing, likely not only to irritate all scholastic philosophers and theologians, but also to harm the Holy Faith by rendering Holy Scripture false.”–Cardinal Bellarmine, 1615
Bellarmine wasn’t some random Cardinal. He was the Cardinal overseeing both Bruno’s and Galileo’s trials. I don’t bring this up to try and throw mud at Christianity, but as an example of how dangerous it can be to pit theology against science. It was a bit slow in coming, but the RCC has since admitted they were in the wrong which is a good sign moving forward.
There is no doubt that both popular belief, philosophical arguments and the religious view (which generally on such matters mirrors popular outlooks) was as you state. The topic of this exchange is the suggestion by you that intuition was the root cause for such an outlook - I have been showing that in fact sensory data (or what you seem to term empirical data) was the cause, and this evidence was put forward by the Greek philosophical school of one sort or another.
Christianity should learn from such mistakes, and the essential lesson would be not to rely on popular or outdated outlooks, on the material world even if they claim scientific and philosophical credibility, when discussing theology based on revealed scripture - this theology begins and ends with “God created the heavens and the earth”.